ensuring that many more people take responsibility and play a part in the many activities which contribute to the lives of both parishes

providing an opportunity for people to commit, to help out, to volunteer and to become more actively involved in parish activities by signing up

Success criteria

BE parish community strengthened

BE strengthened links with St Mary’s community

Parishioners more inspired by the conviction of God’s gifts

God’s gifts flourishing

Renewal of commitment

Younger parishioners playing their part in parish life

Housebound enabled to play their part in parish life

Everyone feels included fully in parish life

People take responsibility and play a part in the parish organisations

People volunteer and to become more actively involved in parish groups

Desired outcomes

Increase in

Membership of each parish group and organisation

Mass attendance

Parishioner input into liturgy as e.g. musicians and readers

Eucharistic Ministers

Funeral Ministers

Volunteers coming forward

Retention of children and families following first communion

Young people taking more responsibility for parish life

20+ people attending each workshop session

100% outreach to housebound

Volunteers joining new organisations in sustainable numbers

The actions in the plan have been divided into categories. These have been displayed in a tabular form. The list below contains links which will allow you to jump to the category you are interested in.

Tuesday

Activity

Time

Where

Caterpillar Music

(This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

10.00am-noon

Parish Hall (main hall)

Fantastic music classes for babies, toddlers and pre-school children. Our popular sessions include amazing puppets, colourful, age appropriate musical instruments and a variety of other props such as parachutes, bean bags chiffon scarves and bubbles to name but a few. Each session is based around a theme and children will learn popular and traditional nursery rhymes combined with some newer fun action songs. The benefits of introducing your little one to music at an early age are enormous. Music and singing develops speech and vocabulary and motor skills and our sessions can also improve confidence and social skills. Above all our sessions are fun and provide parents, grandparents and carers an opportunity to engage with their little ones, learn songs together and meet others in a relaxed and friendly environment.

ensuring that many more people take responsibility and play a part in the many activities which contribute to the lives of both parishes

providing an opportunity for people to commit, to help out, to volunteer and to become more actively involved in parish activities by signing up

Success criteria

BE parish community strengthened

BE strengthened links with St Mary’s community

Parishioners more inspired by the conviction of God’s gifts

God’s gifts flourishing

Renewal of commitment

Younger parishioners playing their part in parish life

Housebound enabled to play their part in parish life

Everyone feels included fully in parish life

People take responsibility and play a part in the parish organisations

People volunteer and to become more actively involved in parish groups

Desired outcomes

Increase in

Membership of each parish group and organisation

Mass attendance

Parishioner input into liturgy as e.g. musicians and readers

Eucharistic Ministers

Funeral Ministers

Volunteers coming forward

Retention of children and families following first communion

Young people taking more responsibility for parish life

20+ people attending each workshop session

100% outreach to housebound

Volunteers joining new organisations in sustainable numbers

The actions in the plan have been divided into categories. These have been displayed in a tabular form. The list below contains links which will allow you to jump to the category you are interested in.

PARISH AWAKENING: I remain encouraged by your interest and some encouraging comments on my article and other articles in the Boston College resources’ magazine on Catholic Families. In view of this, when you have finished with your copy of the magazine, would you be kind enough to return it to the porch of the church so that others may have a chance to see the material?

I will be meeting up with Fr Paul Cannon and Sharon Beech in early August. Their book will be on sale (£7.95) after Mass in the coming weeks or at Bishop Eton Monastery. Please keep reflecting and planning in your own areas of ministry and interest.

Fr. Tim's piece from July 2015's edition of BE Alive

When I wrote this piece for the May edition of BE Alive I did some reflecting and posed a few questions. I look back on the past four years with gratitude and some satisfaction. Now I invite you to build on what has been achievedand prepare for the future with the calm assurance that comes from the words of our Lord himself: “I will be with you always.”

Everything has been pointing me towards calling a grand assembly of our two parishes in the early autumn and after much encouragement from all those whom I have so far consulted we are going ahead with a day in St Julie’s School on Saturday 10 October. This coincides with the Synod on the Family in Rome and provides us with an opportunity to work out how we can respond to the invitation to become ‘evangelising parishes’ and the initiative of our bishops: ‘Proclaim 15.’ We will unite with our brothers and sisters across the country and have ‘Holy Hours’ on 11 July to pray for the success of this whole venture.

PARISH AWAKENING

‘Carpe Diem’: the Latin phrase for ‘seize the day’. It always reminds me of the film, ‘Dead Poets’ Society’ in which Robin Williams plays the teacher who uses some unconventional methods but inspires his pupils to grasp the opportunities life affords.

Whether you are familiar with the film or not, I hope you will understand me when I say that I believe that for our two parishes such a moment is presenting itself. When I was entrusted with the care of Bishop Eton and St Mary’s four years ago, you were in the throes of looking at how you might reorganise yourselves in face of the challenge of sharing a parish priest. In the event with the closure of our house in Sunderland and the reorganisation of the Redemptorist Province I calculated that we would have enough priests in Bishop Eton to maintain the timetables of both parishes and we have successfully achieved that in the intervening years. Now I do not anticipate that there is any immediate need to review that decision, but I do want to alert everyone, young and not so young, to what is happening all around us, not only in the Liverpool Archdiocese but across the country and indeed in many other parts of the world.